Many of the common items that make modern life convenient are created by machining raw material such as metal or wood as it rotates on a lathe spindle. Often lathes are also used to modify previously manufactured objects such as pipes and rods. Many of these machined items require precise dimensions and tolerances to function properly, making it crucial that they are adequately aligned to an axis of rotation of the lathe. Lathes also typically require an attachment mechanism to anchor the workpiece in place as it rotates with the spindle. To address these issues chucks are frequently used in conjunction with lathes and other rotating tools.
In spite of their utility, however, chucks used typically in the art have some drawbacks. For example, dialing a workpiece into a chuck may require excessive time before the axes of the workpiece and the chuck are suitably aligned. Manually tightening and loosing of chuck jaws may also introduce inconsistencies and error in centering efforts. In the prior art, several attempts have been made to resolve these difficulties.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,241,258 to Roussel, herein incorporated by reference for all it teaches, discloses “a method of controlling a hydraulic chuck of a rotary machine tool, the chuck clamping a workpiece to be machined and being actuated by a double-acting clamping/unclamping actuator. A clamping pressure controlled in accordance with a clamping pressure set point is applied to at least one chamber of the actuator and the clamping pressure is maintained in the corresponding chamber if the control pressure upstream of the actuator suddenly fails due to a malfunction.”
U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,242 to Toth herein incorporated by reference for all it teaches, describes an adjustable chuck for gripping workpieces of different sizes at controlled pressure with two strain gauges on one of the jaws that sense the gripping force applied by the jaws to the workpiece. A computer responds to the strain gauges and controls the flow of hydraulic fluid into and out of closing and opening mechanisms.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,568,694 to White, herein incorporated by reference for all it teaches, discloses a combination of two or more jaw assemblies for mounting onto a self-centering power chuck to move an irregular workpiece to the axial centerline of the power chuck after it has been clamped. Each jaw assembly has a base jaw that is affixed to the power chuck, a connecting block that moves when the hydraulic system is actuated, a piston, a cylinder, and an interchangeable swivel insert with a serrated gripping surface.